You don’t sell your soul to the devil, Mark Manson writes, unless a part of you is already dead inside.
In case you aren’t aware, the whole “dating advice for men” thing is a fairly new concept. In fact, it didn’t even exist until a couple decades ago, and really didn’t begin to become a legitimate industry until this last decade. A splinter of this movement is a community that’s commonly referred to as The Pick Up Artist community.
Beginning as some Usenet forums in the 90′s, it was a group of guys who congregated mainly to share pick up lines, strategies and tips in order to sleep with as many women as possible. The prevailing zeitgeist of the time was that there was a knowable “formula” of seduction — that if a man simply knew the correct components and how to press the right buttons, any woman would sleep with him.
Despite all evidence and common sense to the contrary, the idea caught steam and suddenly thousands of men worldwide were dedicating a massive amount of time, energy and effort into “cracking the code” of a woman’s heart and ultimately, her vagina.
The first man who came around claiming to have done this was none other than the famous Mystery himself, creating for himself quite a reputation, a business and later on, a television show to boot. Many others followed in his wake, including Neil Strauss, the author of the best-selling book “The Game.” From there, the floodgates opened. The book was a hit. And soon the few thousand geeks gathered sharing their “secrets” with one another turned into hundreds of thousands, and then millions. A few message boards turned into hundreds. A multi-million dollar industry was born and still thrives to this day.
And as the landscape of “the community” evolved, so did the content in which was created. With the mainstream success of the book and television show came thousands and thousands of normal, mainstream men. Theory slowly drifted away from the concepts of lines and routines. And the idea of there being a formula for picking up women is slowly being rejected in place of advice more focused on getting in touch with one’s sexuality, becoming more dominant and escalating on women liberally.
But despite these positive developments, the scene, as a whole, can be as toxic as it is helpful. The exact reasons why I’ll get into a minute. Hopefully my own story will help you understand my reasoning.
From Heartbreak to Glory Times
In 2005, I underwent one of the most traumatizing moments of my young 21-year-old life. My girlfriend at the time, my high school sweetheart, suddenly left me for another guy. My confidence level with women at the time hovered around nil, and my role in our relationship could have been more or less described as a doormat. I was painfully insecure and blissfully naive. So as you can imagine, I was absolutely devastated.
But despite the glaring flaws in the relationship, at the time — being as ignorant as most of us are with our first loves — I thought everything was perfect up until then. As usual, the last one to realize that the relationship was completely falling apart was the man in it. If you had asked me the day before, I would have told you this was the girl that I would end up marrying. I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else, much less being happy with anyone else.
A few months later, it was by chance that I stumbled across “The Game” in my local bookstore. It was sitting atop the “New Releases” table in front of the door. I’ve always been a bookworm, so its title and appearance was immediately… well, seductive. I picked it up, and my first reaction was to feel repulsed. What kind of scumbag would write a book about this stuff? But of course, being human, I couldn’t help but read the first few pages. I had to see for myself how vile and decrepit this guy was, right?
Needless to say, within 5 minutes I was hooked. I bought the book and finished it within 24 hours.
And so began my foray into the netherworld of PUA. Little did I know how far this wormhole would take me.
I devoured 3-4 books, dozens of YouTube videos and hundreds of pages worth of forum posts in a matter of days. The prospect of not only taking control of my love life (where I had recently been so hurt), but finally becoming the “cool” player that I had always wanted to be, and having massive amounts of sex with hot girls — it was all too much to resist.
It took me three months to work up the nerve to approach a girl. I was so nervous that I immediately apologized for talking to her. It took another three months to actually get a girl to go on a date with me. And finally, two more months to get one to actually sleep with me.
For the next year and a half or so, I went out 5-6 nights a week picking up women. I posted on multiple forums and continued to consume a monstrous amount of dating advice and pick up theory. There was something deep down driving me, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, it wasn’t completely healthy.
But my emotional issues aside, I can’t lie: I was having a blast. After a year or so I was dating multiple women, something I had thought completely impossible before. I was more confident than I had ever been. Had more friends than I had ever had. Was getting laid constantly, and developing some awesome social skills to boot.
Being a Deadbeat and Re-evaluation
But as another year of debauchery and irresponsibility went by, not everything was peachy. I was becoming addicted to the validation I was getting, addicted to the thrills and forsaking a lot of priorities in my life for superficial kicks and fun. Having sex, something that most people treat as a normal activity had almost reached a point of obsession to me. To give you an idea of the state I was in, I wrote the following in November of 2007:
A realization hit me — what’s the big deal? I get laid a lot. Congratu-fucking-lations Mark, you’re a normal part of society now. So why are you spending hours a day posting on forums, reading theory, dissecting phone calls from girls with your roommates and going out four nights a week? For the love of God, I live on a fucking couch. I ride my bike all day. I don’t even have my own computer to type these blog posts on. I haven’t done anything that didn’t involve alcohol, a vagina or a television screen in months.
I was a deadbeat. I was broke, had a shitty job I hated, lived on my friend’s futon, and was going to bars and chasing women every night. Now, I take full responsibility for my behavior, but I existed within a community that glorified and reinforced this type of lifestyle. And ultimately, it was making me miserable.
I made an effort to start getting my life together, and I even began to flirt with ditching the whole PUA thing and trying to get along on my own. But it was soon obvious I wasn’t done yet.
The main thing that sucked me back in was the prospect of coaching. At the time (late 2007), the industry was still booming, and the average experience-level of the guys coming in was unbearably low and naive. Through no act of my own other than sharing my stories and antics publicly on forums, I began getting consistent requests to be coached and taught.
The Truth About PUA Coaching
Here’s a dirty truth about being a PUA coach: many guys who take coaching don’t actually want to change. They want to be validated. They want to feel cool and be around someone who they think is cool. They want to unload the responsibility for changing themselves onto someone else.
Rather than hiring a coach to help them progress, to them it’s more of a “rent-a-cool-friend” service. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of guys who ARE looking to improve, and there are a lot of guys who do have good attitudes and do get a lot out of coaching. I had many students accomplish amazing things with me. But unfortunately, the PUA market and community don’t promote the proper attitudes… in fact, much of the marketing and hype only encourages this sort of pathetic behavior.
The market promotes fanboyism and idol worshiping. It’s sickening. I started to realize this when some of my students turned out to be these brilliant, successful and amazing men. Men who were far more successful in life than I was, and they’d look at me as some sort of demigod. Why? Because I’ve slept with more women? Because when I walk into a club, people actually think I’m cool? It makes absolutely no sense. Looking for advice and guidance is one thing, but this was something else entirely.
A lot of these guys don’t need a pick up instructor. They need a shrink and maybe some sort of anti-anxiety therapy. They need some confidence and a push to put themselves out there more and more. The technical aspect of picking up women really ISN’T that difficult. It really can be explained and taught within a few days. But it must be practiced for a long time, and to have that practice, a guy has to have healthy mindsets and an ability to overcome his fears.
But there’s a side to this that doesn’t get talked about often. There’s a concept in psychology called “The Over-Justification Effect.” From Wikipedia:
The overjustification effect occurs when an external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform a task. According to self-perception theory, people pay more attention to the incentive, and less attention to the enjoyment and satisfaction that they receive from performing the activity. The overall effect is a shift in motivation to extrinsic factors and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation.
In one of the earliest demonstrations of this effect, researchers promised a group of 3-5 year old children that they would receive a “good player” ribbon for drawing with felt-tipped pens. A second group of children played with the pens and received an unexpected reward (the same ribbon), and a third group was not given a reward. All of the children played with the pens, a typically enjoyable activity for preschoolers. Later, when observed in a free-play setting, the children who received a reward that had been promised to them played significantly less with the felt-tipped pens. The researchers concluded that expected rewards undermine intrinsic motivation in previously enjoyable activities.[1] A replication of this experiment found that rewarding children with certificates and trophies decreased intrinsic interest in playing math games.
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This effect is felt too much by instructors. We receive so much external validation and incentive (money, accolades, fanboys, groupies, etc.) that it distorts that original emotional desire to simply meet people and meet women. I also ran into this in music school when I was a teenager. Believe or not, music and art schools have the highest drop out rates in the world (some pushing 90%). And if you think about it, it makes sense. You’re taking something that people have always naturally been inclined to do (create music or art) and start rewarding them tangibly for it through money, grades, prizes, etc. For me it killed all of the passion of music and I dropped out after a year.
There have been some famous studies done on motivation and what they’ve found is this: external incentives create better performance in rote and logical objectives. But external incentives create WORSE performance in creative objectives. Hence the 90% drop out rate of music/art schools.
Well apply that burn out to social interactions and you get a pretty fucked up effect. When your social interactions are the yardstick that your success is measured on, it absolutely kills the joy of socializing, and depresses the hell out of you in the process. When your emotional intimacy becomes a business asset, it completely undermines your relationships. For a prolonged period of time, this effect can lead one to a very dark place. I met many coaches who had been working in the industry for years and years who were obviously miserable people. It’s why my original business partner quit and got a day job. And it consistently tested my resilience for two years.
But both sides are to blame: the consumers for buying into such a false idol, and the instructors for being seduced by it. On the surface, it’s a life of partying, girls and money. The three things a young guy loves most, right? But in actuality, you spend more time hanging out with other men — awkward, insecure and desperately watching every move of yours and judging you. You’re no longer free to just be yourself. You aren’t allowed to have a night where you just want to drink and relax. You aren’t allowed to pass up a girl because you don’t feel like talking to her. You aren’t allowed to be awkward or unsure of yourself or nervous about anything.
The line between “work” and “play” blurs until the two are completely indistinguishable. Your nights out being social are the same as meeting prospective clients and marketing opportunities. Your prospective clients and marketing opportunities, in turn, want to be your friend and go out with you socially. It’s a psychological mess that drags your emotional stability down with it. Thank god I had a serious girlfriend by that time, otherwise I probably would have lost my sanity.
And here’s the most screwed up part: the beliefs on which the community is founded lead to a constant state of mutual discontent. Since the success of one’s sex and emotional life is the standard of success, thousands of men sit online arguing and comparing things that are 100% subjective. And what invariably happens, is everyone merely projects their own personal discontent onto the perceived failures and shortcomings of others. This guy’s girls aren’t hot enough. That guy only sleeps with 3 girls a month. This guy is only good at day game. That guy just gets by on looks. Everyone is deemed a “fraud” in their own way and for some reason, everyone has tacitly agreed to unrealistic expectations that can be met by none. What the community has become is a cesspool of frustrated children with keyboards.
The Pathologies of the Pick Up Artist
There is absolutely NOTHING normal about what a Pick Up Artist does or why he does it. Dating advice is one thing. Self improvement is another. But quantifying your social and emotional life and then measuring it against others online and for money will murder your soul. Plain and simple.
In the beginning picking up women can be a science, but the better you get, the more it becomes an art. Once guys pass a certain threshold or so, the only thing that differentiates them is style. This style is based mostly on your personality and what types of women you like. Improvement only exists in adapting your objective skill-set to your subjective desires. Any sort of “next step” is actually more of a lateral movement, rather than moving up.
Beyond getting the first couple lays, quantifying “game” in any sense approaches the impossible — completely subjective and any arguments about skill-levels, quality, consistency, or styles is arguing past one another — like claiming heavy metal is better than rap just because… well, just because.
Over the years, I’ve dated women that other guys think are hideous. I’ve dated women that guys who don’t know me literally come up to me in bars and give me high fives when she’s not looking. There are a lot of women that most guys consider “hot” that I have absolutely no interest in, and vice-versa.
What I’m getting at, is once you become consistent, the only real metric for “success” is your own satisfaction. We’re always playing a numbers game, and once you get your % up to 1/10 or above, really any objective measure of skill kind of becomes pointless.
Once your % passes that magic threshold, it’s really just a matter of how much time and effort you’re willing to dump into your sex life. Some of us dump a lot of time and effort. Most don’t.
For this reason, the idea of “who is the best?” Or who can close the most consistently, or who has the best club game, the best day game, etc. — it’s a bunch of nonsense and as my friend Doc used to say, “Dick crack.” It gets a bunch of competitive and horny guys and their egos excited. But at the end of the day, whether I can lay a girl in 50 minutes and you need two dates is pointless. If my girl has a 9 body and a 5 face and yours has a 6 body and 8 face is pointless.
You’re getting sucked into the validation trap, which turns into a very dark place if you stay there long enough.
The fact is, what is perceived as “the community,” is merely a loud minority. An elitist and somewhat pathological minority.
You don’t end up in the Pick Up Artist community unless you are incredibly unhappy or unsatisfied about something. It may be conscious, it may be unconscious. It may be short-term, or it may be deep-seated and long-term. But the fact is, the community acts for a lot of men as a diversion or scapegoat from dealing with their real issues — their emotional issues.
We’re men, we’re experts at rationalizing painful feelings away — we hate dealing with them. For a lot of men, all these eBooks and audio courses merely act as rationalizations — a way to escape for a little bit longer, a way to logically solve the unsolvable. Emotions aren’t quantifiable or objective, so these men band together in attempt to quantify and objectify their emotional lives together, under the auspices of “improvement.”
And by their shared metrics, improve they do. “I had my first SNL.” “I banged my first 9 last night.” Etc. But there’s no yardstick for happiness, fulfillment, meaning or significance. This may sound lame and campy, but when you’ve met as many miserable guys with 100+ lays as I have, you may take it seriously.
Some of them forget… they forget that there’s a whole life to these interactions behind the objectification and quantification. They enter the validation trap — where a cocaine-addicted stripper has more value than a Plain Jane with a Ph.D, where a threesome has more value than an engagement ring, where things like acne scars or B-cup tits suddenly become deal-breakers in a relationship.
The PUA community at large is a bubble — it has a propensity to become elitist and to project its own desires and intentions onto everyone else.
They glorify their goals, try to deduce other’s actions and desires into base sexual needs, scoff at guys who don’t get into it as “AFC’s” and look down upon newbies who give up and leave as quitters and men who aren’t “man enough” to persevere the hundreds of rejections just to get their dick wet more often. Yet most guys are pretty damn content with a couple nice girls and a plain-Jane girlfriend who loves them.
Destroying My Demons
As I’ve been saying since 2006, and it’s not a big revelation anymore, but PUA is self-help in disguise. PUA’s can applaud themselves for their social development, their amazing relationships and conquests — but the truth is that they all arrive there because something was/is wrong. And there’s nothing to get all high and mighty about.
It takes a certain kind of man to find the objectification of his emotional life appealing. It takes a certain kind of man to become addicted to the validation of receiving love and affection from women.
The vast, vast majority of men who come to this stuff are the “one and done” crowd. In fact, if you’re reading my site, chances are you’re one of them too. You’re there because you’re nervous about this or that. You have a date coming up. There’s a girl in your class you think is cute, but you don’t know what to say. You’re in the middle of a dry spell and want to get out. You come here for a little simple advice, maybe a little motivation. You go out and get the date you want, the girlfriend you want, approach the girl you want to approach… and then you’re done.
But there’s a loud minority who for them it’s something more.
Something deep down in their emotional fabric drives them much further. They excitedly accept the objectification and relish in the validation. I did. And I see other guys do it too. And really what it is is their way of sorting through their emotional baggage. Some guys it takes 10-15 women. Some it takes 50-100. Some guys are damaged too deeply and never get out. But the truth remains: you don’t sell your soul to the devil unless part of you is already a little dead inside.
I am not an exception, just another casualty. I wrote this in August of 2008:
I had kind of a disconcerting experience tonight. I hung out with some female friends that I’ve known for a long time. And no matter what we talked about, we seemed to always end up back on topics of my sex life, my sexcapades, and in particalar, the threesomes that I’ve had recently.
This actually started to bug me because these are friends I haven’t hung out to any significant degree in about a year, and I felt like we should talk about something more substantial than the vaginas in which I had been sticking my penis. But I realized two things. First of all, I had little else to talk about from the last year and also that my friendships with these girls had ALWAYS largely consisted of me sharing my sexscapades with them. I didn’t realize this until one point when I said, “OK, enough about my sex life, let’s talk about something more interesting.” One of my old friends replied, “But Mark, we ALWAYS talk about your sex life.”
I became horrified. Had my “friendship” with these girls merely consisted of me obsessing over my sexuality with them? Had our friendship just been a repository for me to validate myself — that I’m attractive, that women have sex with me, and that other women like it that women have sex with me?
Sadly, it had.
Your first reaction to this may be, “Shit, I wish I had that problem…” but remember this article and this quote. Because one day you may find yourself there, and you may find yourself as disconcerted as I was.
Whenever I talk about this, most men immediately ask me, “What emotional realities are we running from? What baggage are you talking about? I’m normal, it’s all these other guys who are crazy.”
This is actually an easier question than it may seem. It’s going to be different for every guy, but by FAR the most common deep emotional problems and fears that I come across in the PUA crowd are: ex-girlfriend or ex-wife that broke their heart and/or ruined them, divorced or absent parents, death of a loved one, death of a parent, or just repeated emotional beat-downs growing up — whether it be growing up in the projects, being verbally abused by girls your entire childhood for being fat, etc., etc.
A lot of guys can relate to at least one of the above. I know I can.
It’s painful to go back and deal with a lot of that. Some of it REALLY painful. And we don’t do it. We put it off for years. I came to PUA and was motivated primarily by my ex-girlfriend of four years cheating on me and leaving me. That fucking hurt. I thought I got over it, but I didn’t get over it for years. And when I looked deeper, I just realized that that had just been irritating a deeper wound stemming from my divorced parents and family situation growing up. That one STILL hurts. And I think the circumstances in which I grew up in is the largest reason why I’ve dedicated so much time, effort, thought and emotion to picking up women.
It’s not normal. And I accept that.
I look at myself and I realize now that underneath it all, there was a need for intimacy and love. It was when I finally buckled down and committed to a girl and started a new relationship that was actually healthy and happy, that finally showed me that. Like everyone else on this planet, I’m searching for intimacy and love, I’m just wired in such a way that it’s hard for me to get to that point with a woman. That’s what drives me. Just like I think deep down that’s what drives most of these guys. For whatever reason, we need to traverse some complex and damaged emotional landscape to get there though. And PUA has been an avenue for some of us to do that.
Regardless, I choose to not identify with the Pick Up Artist moniker any longer. The reasons are the two I listed above: I refuse to objectify my social interactions and love life, and I refuse to judge my personal success or have others judge my personal success based on my social and emotional life.
But not only do I choose to continue teaching and coaching, but I believe I can teach and coach from a much healthier and far more successful place this way.
If you were or are part of the PUA community, I encourage you to shed the unhealthy associations that come with it. This site is specifically designed to give dating and seduction advice and direction in a healthy manner: focusing on personal satisfaction and fulfillment with all of your sexual relationships, rather than racking up numbers or conquests, winning the admiration of your peers or attempting to be the “coolest” guy you know.
Personally, I think the PUA thing is a fad. I think in 10 years, we’ll look back and think of it as one of those silly things we did in the 2000′s, kind of like big hair in the 80′s, or dial-up modems in the 90′s. The mindsets the community is based upon are self-defeating, and only the truly damaged or self-loathing would continue to subscribe to them for a whole lifetime.
Dating advice for men, on the other hand, is only growing and will continue to grow. It’s going to continue to expand and become more inclusive and more mainstream. I think everything that’s currently Pick Up Artist related will either transition to a more mainstream audience or fade into relative obscurity. It will run its course, just like the men who make up its ranks will run theirs.
To Be Fair… In Hindsight
I know I’ve been pretty harsh on the whole Pick Up Artist thing in this article. And a lot of this probably stems from my bitterness and being too close to it for too long. But I must give credit where credit is due:
- I would not be nearly as socially confident or competent today, if it weren’t for the PUA community.
- There are HUNDREDS of amazing experiences and dozens of amazing women I would have missed out on, had I not picked up that book on that fateful day.
- Through sheer force and confrontation, I’ve had to face many of my own emotional issues and overcome them in a short period of time — issues I probably would have gone half a lifetime being otherwise oblivious to.
- And of course, I made some pretty cool friends and met some interesting people. Without whom, I wouldn’t be who I am today.
In the end, I suppose this article should be taken as a cautionary tale. There’s a lot to gain from that whole movement, but there’s also a lot that you can get trapped in and sucked under by. A friend of mine put it perfectly when he said, “You can judge a self-help movement by how many people leave it. If people are leaving it, then it’s doing something right.” Well, many people leave the PUA community, so it must be doing something right.
Just make sure you’re one of the ones who leaves.
Originally appeared at PostMasculine.com.
—Photo Nika/Flickr
Forgive me if I got this wrong but would it be fair to say that some shy lonely guy took some tips and then slept with tons of women?
Kinda sounds like this stuff works pretty well.
Around the time The Game came out I was at a bar with friends and a group of guys came up and started chatting to us. One of them struck up a conversation with me and pulled out the “If you were walking in a desert and you saw a cube…” story. Unluckily for him, I’d not long before browsed through just that section of The Game at a bookstore and called him out on it. He denied everything. The sad thing is, his friend went home with my friend that night!
Enjoyed reading this, and agree with a lot that has been said. Many years ago, I got a copy of “The Game” and can honestly say I couldn’t get more than half way through the book…before realising it was BS. Or at least not what I was looking for. Sure, there was a time in my life where having “options” (many women) in my life made me feel important, popular and respected…but that was due to deep rooted childhood issues as well as not having the best father to lead by the correct examples. 9yrs ago, I made a lifestyle… Read more »
I think the promise of PUA techniques is clearly compelling to many men. (Whether the gurus’ teachings fulfill those promises are another matter.) It’s understandably a very attractive offer. It’s a very enticing, simple promise that must be really hard for many men to resist. It promises simplicity, sexual success, and foolproof techniques to get what you want. It offers the illusion of absolute certainty – men are like this, women are like that, that’s just the way it is and if you disagree you’re a tool. If you’re a woman and you criticize these techniques, then you are clearly… Read more »
Yes but the difference between the pop-up ad that promises you a simple trick to flatten your belly in five seconds and this… is that this sounds like it works pretty well.
If you take away the over generalization, is this really anything more then the same tricks used by a sales person?
Great read! Very true, most guys write a load of BS but I can see that you have been down the rabbit hole and come back out again, only very few of us do… the rest get lost down there.
Neil,
Mark:
Amazing article, written with experience, reflection and warmth. This pretty much describes the gist of everything that’s happened in my life from 2009 to now, and describes sections of the road that I am currently travelling. I wonder: if I had read this a year ago, would I have really understood it? No matter: thank you for sharing and thank you for writing this gem.
Jason
When it come to happiness and attracting woman, it’s all about correcting the mental hindrances and let nature do it’s thing.
I guess every argument is so much easier when you can conventionality blame the “male ego”, but I would have hoped that you could do better than trot out a “a men are afraid of rejection” cliche when attempting to make a point. I find this the most hypocritical when it comes out of women, who still in 2012 are yet to woman-up. Even so called “independent” and even femmie women still wait for the men to take all the risks, initiative and risk rejection. It’s easy for the lazy, privileged side to call the other side names for not… Read more »
At the heart of the PUA approach there seems to be an illusion, or at least a focus on only half the story – the idea that the man picks up a woman, that his technique has an effect on a passive recipient. But, if you go home with a woman you just met in a bar, isn’t she picking you up as much as you’re picking her up? Who is playing a game on whom? Maybe you’re the one-night stand, not her. I’m convinced a lot of women on the singles scene hook up with men with DESPITE the… Read more »
Nope. When two people meet, both of them know who is doing the picking up and who is being picked up.
Sometimes it is the man being picked up (and boy is that fun), but most of the time it’s the woman.
And while I’m sure that on occasion there are examples of sex DESPITE game, there are far more instances of sex as a RESULT of game.
Please let me know which bars you are going to
That Guy, here here. Perhaps the issue is one of symantics, what ‘picking up’ is actually defined. Just because I might not have been ‘in his face’ game, doesn’t mean I wasn’t actively on the hunt.
Listen, you can twist it any way you want, but it comes down to this: For the vast, vast majority of men, it is a challenge to get laid. If you’re Brad Pitt, it’s not, but if it’s a challenge to get laid, that means that it becomes a triumph when you succeed. If it was easy to get laid, then it wouldn’t be about “picking up” a woman. Face it, women are passive. You just have to go to any nightclub and watch. Women sit around looking beautiful, dancing with their friends, and field attempts from men, then they… Read more »
Lol. “Picking up” isn’t determined by AM’s level of horniness, nor by AM’s tactics (No one uses “in your face” game. Men don’t have the luxury, and women prefer not to)! Sooo… It’s not semantics (word selection) that is the sticking point. What determines whether AM is “picking up” a man or the other way around is whether AM decided she wanted to get into hypothetical dude’s pants, before he decided he wanted to get into AM’s pants. The person who has spent an hour thinking “how do I get this person home with me?”, while the other was thinking… Read more »
I disagree with pretty much all of this. As someone who has been doing this for the better part of a decade and is in the triple-digit lay count, I can tell you this all/nothing perspective on pick up is a myth. It feeds into the delusion a lot of guys want to have about controlling their sex lives. Sure, one person is usually more invested in sex than the other, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing all or none of the “work” involved. You seem to have a very transactional view of sex. Which I can’t imagine leads to… Read more »
LOL.
Ad hominem is so tacky. I’m very happy and successful.. in most areas of my life.. to include women. Oh and by the way. How does one “confess” to triple digits and then fling “transactional view of sex” in the same comment without one’s head exploding?
No ad hominem, just my opinion. You just seem to have bought into a black/white worldview of relationships which goes against my experience and observation (quantity of which I mention only for sample size purposes).
Mark: sure, a woman has to LET herself be picked up, and that’s active to some degree, but it’s pretty weird to be suggesting that women pick up guys just as often. If all you’re saying is that women contribute, say, 5% of the active pickup process, as opposed to 0%, then that’s not controversial.
I’m saying that it varies and that you can’t make a blanket statement one direction or the other. Women often do a lot of the working in picking up guys. Sometimes it’s like 40/60, sometimes it’s more like 20/80. Sometimes it’s 95/5 man’s effort during the initial pick up, but then it becomes 95/5 woman’s effort on the first date. Sure on average, men need to initiate more often than women, and therefore put in more of the “work” pre-sex than women do. But it still varies widely, and varies from couple to couple and sometimes varies within the same… Read more »
But I’m glad you’re happy and successful in your relationships. Because you don’t come across that way in these comments.
I think I’m using “picking up” in a much more general sense, and “active” and “passive” in a more general sense as well. When I look at the bigger picture of everything that leads to a hook-up with a stranger in a bar, I find it hard to see one person as active and the other passive. They’re both making dozens of choices and doing a hundred different things before anyone “scores” anything. Maybe in the vast majority of cases it’s the man who starts the conversation and not the woman, and probably the man who keeps the conversation going… Read more »
Yep. I love this comment.
I don’t. Have a great weekend.
Why don’t you love the comment? Because it challenges your world view of women as active players in their own sexual life?
Never mind. I see your response below. You have a good weekend as well.
Yes, you nailed it. Agree with 100% of this.
Really? You are sooo barking up the wrong tree. I guess every argument is so much easier when you can conventionality blame the “male ego”, but I would have hoped that you could do better than trot out a “a men are afraid of rejection” cliche when attempting to make a point. You have no idea what an “IOI” is do you? Well, it stands for Indicator of Interest and is the cornerstone of PUA. The illusion YOU have is that the “pick up” role references style (e.g. passivity, directness, visual or whatever) and then automatically creates an opposite in… Read more »
Okay, I think I get it. From what I’m reading, you’re defining the “pick-up” as a very specific moment in the larger encounter, the moment when one person has convinced the undecided person to have sex. If I look at it that way, in terms of that that moment, yes, in most cases one is the more active pursuer and the other the more passive undecided party. Probably in most cases it is the male who is more the pursuer and the female the pursued. Very true. I daresay in many of those cases that woman went to the bar… Read more »
As for the alpha male thing, men are FAR more obsessed with Chuck Norris/Vin Diesel/James Bond types than women are. Seriously. I wonder if there’ll be a turnaround when it comes to negs and PUA techniques. I noticed something was amiss 4-5 years ago when certain types of guys started to approach me in certain types of ways. Now, most women (particularly women in their 20s) are familiar with PUA techniques, and if used even a little incorrectly or obviously, your chances are completely out the window. Even a mildly transparent neg is a huge red flag at this point.… Read more »
Nope. Women are far more obsessed with Alphaness (celebrity/status) in males than are men. It’s just that a guy would rather be James Bond than a dude from Twilight.
And as for women in there 20’s… do you think PUA invented the backhanded compliment? Nope. They just tweaked it and renamed it the NEG. Game works…because it’s about status. I just picked up a girl yesterday using it.
PS. “it’s too bad that color is out of fashion, because that eyeshadow looks so good on you” isn’t a backhanded compliment… it’s an insult.
Regular guy input:
I love Julie g, but it has been my experience that women respond to tactics and things ‘nice’ guys find counterintuitive. In a perfect world the good hearted man would win the heart of the woman he loves. That’s not the reality I see. I’m not a pua, but I find, it fascinating to learn about what women say they want and what they actually respond to. Even women that don’t ‘need’ a man seem to gravitate to certain characteristics…
Some likely do or it wouldn’t work. And some don’t. Some women seek other attributes. The more I reAd this site the more I realize I am a very odd woman with a very odd community. I believe your experices but don’t often recognize them.
I’m glad you finally realized how different you are. I like you, but please realize you are unique, not common. Most of the advice you give is impractical for the rest of us.
On an other thread, a group of us were having a conversation about “inauthenticity.” To me, an inauthentic person acts in a way that is different than his or her stated belief. I don’t doubt that you have met women that act in the way you say they do. Maybe even *every* women you have met is inauthentic. But I can’t believe every woman really does that — acts in a way that is incongruent with her stated beliefs and values. And obviously finding an authentic woman — one who can love you for exactly who you are, one who… Read more »
Word
Fair enough Lisa. I agree that self discovery is a part of the puzzle, but I can’t totally ignore generalizations as if we all can’t be generalized first as humans and further down into subcategories with certain behavior patterns. How would products be marketed if this weren’t so? Romance novels? Hello? Now I KNOW none of YOU ladies read them ( you are much too enlightened) but somebody is supporting this industry and it isn’t the men….
Geez I’m sick of hearing about alpha males. The only type of people I will call losers are alpha males. Every single one of them I’ve ever met was shallow and arrogant. And since everyone likes to reference John Wayne, I’ll tell you what Marion would have said to em. “Get outta the way”.
This was a great article to read, Mark. I used to read into this stuff and it always felt it was so superficial. It usually left me deeply bitter at women, that they would fall for and choose the guys who just want another 9 points to their lay score, and turn down the PhDs who seemed human. And furthermore, it destroyed me that society would spit on the engineers, mathematicians, and chemists, because no matter how they had changed the world or what they had discovered, they were still scum based on the lack of notches on their bedpost.… Read more »
This is probably the best PUA article I have ever read. Thank you! I am sending it to all of my Male clients!!!
I will… tomorrow. Gotta meet friends for dinner.
Have fun!
@julie “I’m for win win and I’m a feminist. I’m for more pleasure and less war. What are the other motives men have for sex or don’t they have any? Do women ever just like sex for sex or do they always have some motive? My personal opinion is that most people have multiple motives for most things.” If you were for win win you’d call yourself a humanist, but I digress. There are others related to relationships, but the most common reasons for men to want sex with a relative stranger are visual arousal or horniness. And 90+% of… Read more »
I do call myself a humanist, a feminist, a lefty, a sexualist, a confounder, and a skilled facilitatrix. So many labels, so little time.
Would you do me the honor of expanding on visual arousal vs general lust? I’m finding this conversation for the most part illuminating.
As I had previously mentioned, men’s desire for casual sex happens in one of two ways. That is… general lust (horniness) and visual arousal. For the sake of accessibility it makes sense for me to compare this sexual response to the desire for food as that is universally understood. Ever awakened in the morning to a mighty hunger and then beeline to the fridge or pantry and just start grabbing anything within reach? That’s general male lust (horninesss). Obviously the origin is internal/hormonal , but nevertheless it is one of the reasons guys seek out casual sex. The other more… Read more »
Sounds kind of awful. Odd. To be hungry all the time, in search of food that you might not get. Sounds more like a burden than a joy. Considering women aren’t bakery items to be purchased whenever the mood strikes, I can see why you all would be frustrated. And actually, you all do find women/bakery items to purchase don’t you. Makes me realize why some cultures place women in burkha. So that the men’s hunger won’t be exacerbated. Cause I guess they can’t help it can they. Actually, I think they can. Or they should. Because women aren’t foods… Read more »
But women can’t be pastries, Julie, because y’all are as horny as rabbits and interested in casual sex just as much as men.
I don’t even know how to respond to that sarcasm. Some women are horny. Some are not, some men have lower sex drives. Variety in our species go figure. People are people. No one likes being tricked. I root for the ways of coupling that bring the least pain and most pleasure. Most of us seem to want connection Of some kind. Good luck to you with yours. If you are contented, I suppose that’s all tha matters
And I have a hard time responding to indifference… especially from someone who says she wants win win. Basically your replies to the fact that men have a distinctly different sexuality than women has been ” suck it up” and then “good luck!”
I think Pontius Pilate acted more interested.
Th win win? You seem fine and happy with your choices so that seems like a win. What are we fighting about? I am not trying to change your point of view. And mine simply is tha I disagree and focus more on seeing the variety. I believe your experience but don’t recognize it. My good luck and so forth is sincere. If you are enjoying your life good on ya.
Finally, what does win win look like to you? I”m happy for your life if you are happy. I wouldn’t ask you to change yourself. I’m quite happy with my life, lovers and friends. We’ve both given each other things to argue about, think about etc. What could be more of a win win then that?
Julie,
I’m happy for my life too.. down to what I had out at dinner last night, but this conversation is about PUA and casual sex. So win win applies to the environment that men and women do their mating and dating in, not about you or me living our charmed lives.
So what would a win win look like to you? Describe the world you’d see as a win win world? I ask because I want to hear it. I think I know what mine looks like, but I don’t know what yours would look like, and I”m curious. Also, I have to prep to go out of town tomorrow (funeral, ugh) so I may not be around much tonight. But if you have a scenario you could share that would be great. If not, no worries.
He does have a point to a certain extent, however. It’s an objectifying simile, but valid nonetheless. Humans are some of the only creatures to have a 24/7/365.25 sex drive. For most creatures, it’s only a few weeks to a couple months per year they feel like this. And when that happens, everyone is ready for it, and everyone is pairing up and going at it. Part of being human is learning to own your nonstop sexual hunger without it consuming you. For Mark, it seems the PUA community kept up with his constant sex drive and drove it behind,… Read more »
Weber,
Thanks for sharing. Julie only sees “objectification” in the high sex drive, but not in the common exploitation of it as a vulnerability. Of course, to her, it’s all men’s fault that we are biologically this way, and rather than her saying, “Hey, maybe the female modest dress thing makes sense”, her response is an insincere “oh that’s awful that guys are so horny, but y’all need to man up cuz women aren’t baked goods!
She may understand why the burka exists, but she still doesn’t get why its a mandate!
You are so funny. I don’t think men are biologically dogs or whatever . If modest dress makes sense as all men are tormented by their hormones does it make more sense to cover up and restrict hlf the population or treat the hormones so that men can feel better being around women? Neither option obviously and both are radical points of view. Human beings can and do exist around each other without restricting or harmIng each other . At least thats been my experience. All of us love lust and long and while biology can indeed have an influence… Read more »
Edited to say that again, in case it wasn’t clear, neither radical position is a good option.
Not as comical as you are.
So really strong urges make one a dog, huh? Nice shaming.
Are women dogs? Nope. Of course not, that’s why they should be married before having sex. Right?
Hormones don’t torment. They are biological. The answer is clothes. Ever heard of a dress code?
I’m glad you’re happy for me, but educators have more skin in the game than supporting “whatever works for you”
I have no idea what you are talking about. I don’t think men are dogs. I’m not shaming anyone here. I’m not saying to you, nor have I, gee fella I think you are a big ole dawg. Nope. I do think they have biological urges which may or may not (depending on the man) be different than womens. I think women have urges too. I don’t think women or men should justify bad behavior on hormones in general. I don’t think women should blame bad moods solely on PMS anymore than I think men should blame aggressive behavior on… Read more »
Are you sure you’re not using a collection of over simplifications, hyper rationalizations & straw feminist arguments to hide your own inadequacies.
Not that I’m judging you (I do it to)….
Me? What did I do? Point it out Budmin? I thought I was discussing in good faith! What inadequacies am I hiding? i’m pretty clear on what most of them are (I thought!).
Ofcourse not Julie,
I’m still waiting for Mr. “I don’t believe you” to answer the questions about women not finding Men attractive as a general rule.
Or if he feel that having a vagina gives women an unfair advantage.
Keep waiting.
1.You snipe rather than converse.
2. I’m not so sure someone with a history of sexual frustration has much to add to my understanding of women and casual sex.
@Mark Goblowsky I’ve internalized the hostility & fear I have for women as a the result of my growing up in a rough neighborhood during the 90’s drug boom. In my eyes women were rewarding men of violent potential with accolades and worship while equating bookworm introverts like me as something similar to a mouse stuck helpless in a glue trap. I was pitied but the but not looked ( & forget about ever being touched) Right now I am a “proud” Man Going His Own Way. Gainfully employed and unattached. I always tell women that men are a collection… Read more »
“Your task is not to find love, but to find the barriers you’ve built up against it.”
– Rumi
Good luck.
I think you’re spot on, Budmin.
” I would not be nearly as socially confident or competent today, if it weren’t for the PUA community. There are HUNDREDS of amazing experiences and dozens of amazing women I would have missed out on, had I not picked up that book on that fateful day. Through sheer force and confrontation, I’ve had to face many of my own emotional issues and overcome them in a short period of time — issues I probably would have gone half a lifetime being otherwise oblivious to. And of course, I made some pretty cool friends and met some interesting people. Without… Read more »
When your social interactions are the yardstick that your success is measured on, it absolutely kills the joy of socializing, and depresses the hell out of you in the process. When your emotional intimacy becomes a business asset, it completely undermines your relationships. THIS. Absolutely in our culture we’ve become addicted to quantifying and measuring our social interactions! Starting about 20 years ago, when we first began to see the stories about how married people are healthier, wealthier and happier. Then leading into how sociable people are better off in general, and how we’re social beings so following the crowd… Read more »
I was friendly with a guy, G., in 8th grade, who fancied himself a PUA, but, of course, at that age, I could see him coming from a mile away….frankly, I let him hold my books in the hallway, went ice-skating with him, and went to one movie with him (and his parents sitting a few rows behind us)….Meanwhile, I talked constantly about my real BF (who lived an hour away in a suburb near the ocean)….G. finally asked me out (i.e., to go steady) over the phone and I said “no”….he was crushed but tried to hide it…later he… Read more »
Good luck in your efforts Mark. It’s a mess out there.
Mark
I was looking around your site, would it be fair to say that where you are going with PUA is a more polished and mainstream logical next step for it – something more resembling the established female PUA industry eg. Cosmo etc, than the subculture?
To a degree, yes. Although I’d like to retain a little more substance than a publication such as Cosmo.
I think I may need to pick up the game. I’ll take your problem — getting too much sex with no emotional component — to my problem. No sex, ever, with no emotional component.
Not to turn this into a sales-pitch or anything, but you may want to check out my book that talks about becoming an attractive man without resorting to the PUA nonsense. Might as well learn to get sex and the emotional component handled all at once if you’re going to make this step with your life. The stuff I teach nowadays focuses on being attractive through honest communication and self-improvement.
You can find it on my site or by searching my name on Amazon.
http://postmasculine.com/models/
As your own article illustrates, PUA doesn’t have to be “nonsense.” It depends what you’re looking for and what matters to you. Describing all PUAs as “damaged” is just another stereotype.
“What I’m getting at, is once you become consistent, the only real metric for “success” is your own satisfaction.”
Exactly! And some guys are quite satisfied with frequent, casual relationships. Others have gotten sick of them and moved on to something else, and still others would never consider such a thing in the first place. Ain’t diversity great?
@Mark Goblowsky
Wouldn’t that be called “inner game”?
I got Mark’s book and it’s been a revelation – this is the education that I should have gotten 30 years ago from my dad (although one of the benefits of reading the book was that I realized HE probably didn’t get it either, poor guy). I have to make a few major lifestyle changes before I put a lot of the advice into practice, but I’d swear women are looking at me differently already, just from reading the book – there’s already been a subtle internal shift. The interesting thing is that at its core this book is purely… Read more »
I’m marrying my pick up artist! I thought he was a douche when we first met. Found an amazing man underneath who was using pua to get over a messy divorce. As a woman who benefited from PUA, I ended up doing a lot of research on it during the course of our relationship, I’ve found schools of PUA that are great at polishing a good man and there are schools of PUA that should be taken out bad and quietly shot. For the most part PUA is a program for nerds and it trains men to do what they… Read more »
I hope this comment is from an actual person in this situation. Good for you. Chances are your PUA fiancee is the type who values marriage and commitment very much. He just needed some instruction on approaching women and the early stages of courtship so that he could get there. Plenty of single men in dry spells would make great boyfriends or husbands, but they aren’t good at navigating the first few stages of courtship.
Let’s keep it real, shall we? The masses are not in the community to turn a profit or because they have an addictive personality disorder. A professional PUA writing about getting poon has as much insight as a porn star talking about the topic. Their lives and experiences don’t reflect the millions of guys whose interest in pua stuff is primarily to increase access to sexual pleasure.
I would say a good pro PUA would have more insight than a porn star. PUAs make their money off instructing. An instructor who takes his job seriously and who sees enough students will start to notice some things. Also most PUA instructors I know didn’t start as instructors–they learned from their own experience too. So they share a lot of the same experience as most guys. I used to joke that I had yet to meet a guy whose entry into PUA-dom didn’t start with “Well, there was this girl I liked…” I agree there are a lot of… Read more »
Pro PUA’s have more hindsight than porn stars, but not more insight. Those into poon as industry(PUA instructors and adult film stars) are out of touch with those who are into poon as recreation. The Fun vs work/Personal vs Commercial distinction is the critical piece that you miss. Only a small subset of men who use and practice PUA tactics pay for workshops, etc.
“Students” and their “instructors” don’t make up the majority of PUA’s.